After the Thames
by Colubrina
Summary: Draco and Theo come across Hermione Granger throwing rocks into the river several years after the war. They'd had an odd connection that had started in the library at Hogwarts but nothing really began until after the Thames. COMPLETE
1. Chapter 1

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 **A/N - This was originally published as a happy birthday ficlet for JenCala. I reread it nine months later and the muse struck and so a second chapter was created, heavily enabled by Stefartemis. I hope you enjoy it.**

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It started in the library in fifth year on that horrible day the whole school found out Theo's father was a Death Eater.

Hell, he himself hadn't even been sure of that but nothing quite like having your father arrested, in full mask and robes, while trying to kill a bunch of your classmates at the Ministry of Magic, to clarify that point.

It clarified it right into common gossip. He joined Greg and Vince and Draco and the four of them scowled at their schoolmates and looked as intimidating as they could and everyone outside Slytherin stayed away from them. "It doesn't matter," he told Greg. "Fuckers, all of them. We'll be fine. _Fine_."

He wasn't positive whether he was calling their fathers – men stupid enough to have joined up with a Dark Wizard – or their classmates fuckers. All he was quite sure of was that there was no way in hell this was going to be fine. He was bent over a table, trying to put his own mask back into place as firmly as he could before going out to walk in the halls and ignore the pointing and sneering when he felt a light touch on his shoulder.

When he spun around she was there.

"Don't you touch me you filthy – ." He cut himself off at the look in her eyes. Hurt. She looked hurt, as if he'd slapped her. "Don't touch me," he said again, lamely.

"I just wanted to say I was sorry," she said, her voice pitched so it wouldn't carry in the library. "I'm sure today's been awful and, well, I'm sorry."

Theo stared at the girl. Mudblood. Filth. And the only person outside his House who'd even spoken to him all day.

"Yeah," he muttered. "Thanks."

"No problem," she said, hefting a ratty bag to her shoulder. "I know what it's like to be on the receiving end of some of those looks."

He'd flushed at that. "Yeah," he said again, then, "Sorry."

She shrugged. "It'll be okay."

"Probably not," he said. "But thanks for saying it."

"What'd she want," Draco Malfoy asked after she walked away.

Theo looked at the back of the retreating Hermione Granger. Her bushy hair had been tied up into a ponytail that was threatening to burst free at any moment, one sock had slipped down and she reached down to hitch it up as she walked. Her eyes, he thought. They had flecks of gold in them. "She wanted to say she was sorry," he said at last to Draco.

"Really?" Draco said in the cold, tight voice he'd been using all day. "Granger wanted that?"

"It's what she said," Theo replied, his eyes still tracking her as she turned a corner and disappeared. Draco leaned into him as if they could draw strength from one another but Theo wasn't sure he had any strength left to give, not even to Draco who needed it so badly.

He tried to put Granger out of his mind after that. However pretty her eyes were, however much she'd made his throat clench with her careful words, she was still anathema. Dirt.

Pretty dirt, though.

He found himself watching her all sixth year. Her hair had a bunch of different shades of brown in it and her skin almost glowed with some kind of inner luminescence he wouldn't have expected in anyone not as painfully pale as Draco. Draco who, he realized, watched her too. Draco, who sat so he could see the Gryffindor table at every meal. Draco, who positioned himself so she was in his line of sight in every class they shared. Draco, whose father was also a Death Eater.

Draco, who was a Death Eater.

Draco, who was his.

"She's pretty," Theo said as he slid next to Draco in Potions one day, his voice neutral.

"Mudblood," Draco said.

"Mmm," Theo said. "So you wouldn't mind if I…" He trailed off at Draco's angry look.

"She's not for the likes of either of us," Draco said, his hands never faltering as he cut tubers into perfect slices. "She's mad for Weasley."

Theo had noticed that.

"What if she weren't?" he asked.

The look Draco gave him was anguished. "I'm a death sentence," he whispered. "For anyone, really, even you, but especially her."

Theo looked down at his own hands. "I would share," he said. "If she'd have us."

Draco swallowed and let a single finger reach out to touch Theo's palm. "After the war," he said. "If I'm alive."

Theo moved his hand to cover Draco's finger. "Best friends and more?" he asked.

Draco just nodded and pulled his hand away.

By the time the war was over, by the time they'd survived and become despised outcasts, free to not be hired for any position, free to be refused service, free to live in a flat and stare at the walls, unsure of what to do with their lives, Theo had almost managed to forget the war heroine who'd put her hand on his arm the day the world had gotten dark and tried to tell him it would be okay, that she was sorry he was hurting. He held onto Draco when he woke screaming, and they began a quest to find a way to watch Quidditch when no pub would let Draco in and Theo would be damned if he'd leave the man at home alone. They spent a lot of time walking outdoors, as if they could breath in clean air and breathe out the pollution that choked their souls.

The war had been over for several years when they saw her, throwing rocks into the Thames. "You shouldn't do that," Theo said walking up to stand at her side. "I think there's a sign down the way telling people not to throw things."

"Bugger off," she muttered before she looked at him and blinked a few times. "Theodore Nott?" she asked, as if she were trying to place him.

He nodded.

She looked past him at Draco and said, her tone even more guarded, "Malfoy."

"Granger," he said. "Or is it Weasley now?"

She looked back at the water. "Hermione will do. Certainly not Weasley."

Draco opened his mouth like he was going to say something and Theo stepped on his foot. "How have you been," he asked as Draco glared at him. "Since school, I mean."

She shrugged. "Work, mostly," she said.

"Saving the world still?" Theo asked.

She made a snort that sounded suspiciously like a sob she was trying to hide. "No," she said. "Just filling out reports it seems. Nothing really valuable."

Theo reached out and put one hand on her arm and she flinched at the contact. "I'm sure it's valuable," he said. "Stonehenge wasn't built in a day and all that. What are you doing?"

"Magical creatures department," she said. "The regulation and control thereof."

"That sounds boring as fuck," Draco said, "but valuable enough. Someone's got to do it. Better you than me, though."

"Salazar," Theo snapped at his partner, "Would it be possible for you to be any more tactless?"

Before he could apologize for the man, however, Hermione turned back to them and smiled. "Well, since my ex called it 'a totally worthless waste of my time' I can say with some confidence that, yes, it's possible to be more tactless than Malfoy."

"Draco," he muttered.

"What?" Hermione asked.

"Dray-co," Draco said again, exaggerating the pronunciation. "I mean, if we're to call you by your first name you should return the favor. Draco. Theodore."

She turned her back to the river and leaned up against the railing as she regarded them both. "Theodore," she repeated. "Draco." Then she shook her head. "That feels weird," she admitted. "I even thought of you as Malfoy for years. It's like you have a whole new name."

"New names to try again?" Theo suggested. "We weren't exactly friends in school."

"And you want to be friends now?" Hermione shook her head. "I don't know. Theodore. Mal… Draco. I was tortured in your house, Draco. You stood there while I was – "

She stopped talking and stared at Draco and Theo closed his eyes for a brief moment. Watching Hermione Granger be tortured was a recurring theme in Draco's nightmares along with giant snakes and that cursed Vanishing Cabinet. He opened his eyes again and turned his back on the woman next to him to grab Draco by the arms and start the repeated reassurances that could usually stop the panic attacks. "It's okay, it's over. She survived," Theo said. "You did what you could and you were a kid and it's over. Your aunt is dead. Granger survived. I love you, it's okay." He went through that litany over and over until Draco wasn't shaking any more and had stopped gasping like a man who could barely get enough air.

When Theo turned back to look at her Granger was as pale as he'd ever seen her, almost grey. "He really is sorry about that," Theo said, his voice tight. "It haunts him, actually."

"I'm not going to apologize for being upset I was tortured," Hermione said but she sounded, and looked, shocked by the Draco's response.

"He didn't do it," Theo said, his voice growing in volume. "He would have stopped it if he could. Merlin, he'd been half in love with you for years at that point and you think he wanted to stand there helplessly and watch you be hurt?" He gave her a look of disgust. "It would have been terrible no matter who it was, but that it was you made it so much worse."

"Not as bad as it was for me," she whispered and then Theo realized he'd been almost yelling at a torture victim.

"Shite," he said, and yanked her into a hug without thinking. She stood, stiff, in his arms. "I'm sorry. I'm an arse. Of course it was worse for you."

She pulled herself away and used the edge of her sleeve to wipe at her eyes. "Could this day get any more uncomfortable?" she muttered. "Ron dumps me, or I dump him, hard to be really sure, and then I push Malfoy into a bloody panic attack and now I'm crying all over bloody gorgeous Theodore Nott. What next?"

Theo looked at her for a moment and tried to register that she had opinions about his appearance, that the girl he'd stared at for a year thought he was gorgeous, and then he said, "Dinner?"

She blinked at him a few times and made an undignified sniffle and he muttered, "Not that any place will serve us, of course, the whole Death Eater thing, but we'd be happy to have you over and cook something. I'm a good cook and Draco has managed to accumulate a pretty impressive wine collection."

"No place will serve you?" she asked, her voice taking on an edge that Theo would learn to dread over the next year.

"Death Eater," Draco said, managing to get a certain contemptuous drawl into his own voice despite still holding on to the railing with a white knuckled grip to steady himself. "People have problems with that. Not sure why."

Hermione Granger glared at him, or at least in his general direction, and Draco glared back as she ground out, "Dinner would be lovely, Theodore. And tomorrow night we'll just see about places not serving you."

It started, Theo thought later, in the library at Hogwarts, but it didn't really begin until the Thames.


	2. Chapter 2

Draco Malfoy wanted to throw up. His gut roiled and he could feel himself shaking and Theo seemed determined to ignore all of that. He'd actually invited the witch over for dinner. Dinner! How was he supposed to sit across the table and have a civilized meal with a woman he'd seen screaming in agony on his floor and who he still saw tortured in his dreams? What was he supposed to talk about? He kept trying to catch Theo's eye as if he could somehow scuttle this entire plan but the man refused to look directly at him and instead offered Hermione Granger his arm and led her off to their flat.

Draco had never been ashamed of his flat before. It was filled with light and had huge windows that had once illuminated factory work and now just kept the shadows away. There was an open kitchen, and room for Theo's books and his wine, and a guest bedroom in case anyone ever wanted to admit they knew a Death Eater, and the shower never ran out of hot water, and it was a great flat. It was also small. There were no rolling parks, no gates, no peacocks. It wasn't a manor.

After they'd climbed the stairs to the fifth floor and Theo had opened the door and ushered the witch in, Draco waited for her to make a comment about how he'd come down in the world since she'd last seen him but all Hermione did was toss a truly ugly bag down onto a table and say, "You mentioned wine?"

"Yeah," he said, and pulled out a bottle of something Muggle, which she didn't comment on, and three glasses, and poured.

She took a sip and her eyes widened. "This is good," she said.

"Better than you're used to, I'm sure," he said.

"Draco!" Theo nearly hissed his name and Draco faced Hermione with a smirk firmly in place and waited for her to be offended and leave.

Instead she just took another sip from her wine and said, "I have to admit it's true. Neither Ron nor Harry really cared about wine. Ginny either. Cheap ale was their drink of choice." She took another drink and Draco felt gratified at the way she was savoring what he'd selected. "I could never get a taste for it," she added.

Theo began sorting through ingredients he had on hand and Hermione settled on a stool at the counter. She asked polite questions about when he'd taken up cooking and her shoulders became markedly tense at his offhand remark that unless they wanted to eat out in Muggle London every night learning to put a meal together had been a bit mandatory. Draco sat next to her and pushed his sleeves up to make sure his Mark was out and in her face and her eyes rested on it. "That had to be terrible," she said. She reached a finger out and touched it and he controlled his flinch.

"Bona fide bad guy," he said.

She drained her glass and held it out for more. "I understand some women like those," she said. She glanced over at Theo who was using his wand to dice herbs into smaller and smaller bits. "Or men. You should have plenty of fans."

Draco filled her glass. "I prefer to stay away from thrill seekers who want to brag they dared to talk to the big, bad wolf," he said.

"So," Theo said. "You and Weasley broke up?"

Subtle, Draco thought as he took a large swallow of his own wine. Still, in classic Theo fashion, the man had managed to combine two goals and had diverted attention from Draco's own issues while simultaneously fishing for information about how available she was. Years had gone by since school and the war and Theo's torch for the witch had never quite extinguished.

"Oh, yes," she said. "I'm boring and mental and, oh, all sorts of things." She took another large swallow of her wine. "People say dreadful things when they're ending it, you know."

"I suppose," Theo said. "Boring seems a bit unlikely."

Hermione took another drink and Draco found himself wondering what, exactly, her tolerance was. "I'm not the girl you take to the pub," she said. "I dress badly - "

"He's got a point there," Draco muttered to another hiss of disapproval from Theo.

" - and I spend all my time with my nose in a book." Hermione looked over at Theo's bookshelves and let out a sigh that might have been raw lust before she returned her attention to the man at her side. "We just weren't well suited is all. We let the passions of war hide that it was really a school girl crush on my part and, well, I don't know what on his." By the time Theo had finished preparing the chicken and cream and had set it into the over, Draco had lost what little sympathy he might have once had for Ron Weasley. He could intellectually acknowledge the man had been a hero but he'd also taken a witch Draco had admired, though never in a way anyone could see, and left her crying at the river and thinking maybe she really was dull because she didn't want to go to a grotty pub and drink cheap ale with a bunch of wankers.

Not well suited, indeed.

By the time she was dipping bread into the sauce and on her fourth glass of wine, she was revealing things Draco had never wanted to know. "I never even liked his body," she said. "He was bulky and hairy and his - "

"You can stop," Draco said, afraid she'd go even further. There were things he absolutely did not need to know about Ron Weasley. "He's not my type either."

That made her laugh.

"You," she said, leaning back so she almost fell off the stool, "You're much more the thing. All slender and wiry." She looked at Theo. "You too." She set her glass down and sighed. "How did I end up getting pissed with two boys from school, not my friends, both gay?"

"We picked you up," Theo said.

"Bi," said Draco. When she blinked at him a few times in confusion he said, more slowly, "Bisexual, not gay."

"At least in theory," Theo muttered.

"You've never?" Hermione looked from one of them to the other.

"We've lived together since the war," Draco said. "I assure you, we have."

"I meant with a girl."

Draco looked over at Theo who became very busy with clearing the plates. They'd certainly talked about it more than once, but since the only woman either of them had ever felt any kind of consistent attraction to was currently sitting on a stool in their flat, drunk as hell, it hadn't been something worth pursuing. The few women who might have been interested in a Death Eater and his partner were not the sort Draco would have wanted to even experiment with.

As Hermione had pointed out, some women did love a bad boy. He didn't feel like letting any of them into a life that involved nightmares and fear of the dark and a lot of rage.

"I," Hermione said, "have a great idea."

When she told them what it was Theo looked as if Christmas might have come early but Draco could feel a chasm open up underneath him. He'd fall, oh how he'd fall, and she'd walk off after a fun, drunken night with two old schoolmates, not even friends, and he'd be left in pieces. He settled on the easy excuse. "You're too pissed to make decisions like that." He tipped his head toward her glass. "I bet you can't even stand, much less consent to… no."

She tried to prove she could stand, an exercise that went badly, and Theo sighed. He might want to, but he wasn't going to take advantage of her in this state. "You can't even apparate home," he said. "You'd splinch yourself into a dozen parts." He coerced and bullied and insisted and at last the witch agreed to spend the night in their guest room. Theo handed her one of Draco's shirts and a hangover potion and said, "I'll make you eggs in the morning."

"I'm fine," she said and shut the door behind her.

Draco looked at Theo. "You had to invite her to dinner, didn't you?" he asked.

"I'll be wanking off to the sound of her propositioning us for months," Theo agreed rather glumly. "Let's go to bed. We can do the dishes tomorrow."

. . . . . . . . . .

When Draco Malfoy opened his eyes, Hermione Granger was seated at the foot of his bed. She looked healthy and well and even a tad mischievous and he braced himself for what would come next. He shut his eyes, hoping to somehow fast forward to the end, but when he opened them again she was still there, still whole, inexplicable wearing one of his shirts.

"You aren't covered in blood," he said, hoping if he talked to her this would be one of the less horrible visions. Sometimes she forgave him in these dreams. More often she just begged him to make it stop.

The look of playful devilry faded and she asked, "Why would I be?" He could see the moment she realized what was happening, and that shift in her eyes brought him all the way to lucidity. "I'm really here," she said, her tone unbearably gentle. "We had dinner last night and I overindulged in a rather glorious bottle of wine, or two, you opened, and you let me stay in your guest room. This isn't a... you're awake."

"Three," he said, willing himself to not shake. Even the memory of dreams past was enough to start the day badly. "We opened a third bottle."

She saw too much. She asked why he'd thought she'd be bloody and without meaning to, he told her. Theo lay next him, sprawled out and graceless and unconscious, and Draco said, "You usually are, is all." Theo looked as gorgeous as he usually did asleep, his hair rumpled in a way that seemed deliberate and his carelessly thrown arm embodying all the ease and privilege Draco had grown up with. He tried to summon some of that nonchalance and propped himself up on his arms and asked the witch why she'd let herself into his room.

"Well," she said, "I was going to point out I'm not drunk now, but..." She stopped and Draco forced a cocky smile to his face.

"Yes, I suppose the knowledge I dream of you covered in blood has quite spoilt the mood." He dreamt of her tortured. He dreamt of her screaming. He dreamt his aunt stood behind her, knife in hand, telling him not to fret because she'd kill anyone who wasn't worthy of him.

"Theo said you were haunted... I guess I should have listened."

She turned to go and he said, hoping to salvage something from this uncomfortable moment, "We could have tea before you leave?"

She nodded and he suspected she was just pitying him, the sad Death Eater with the nightmares, but she waited for him out in the kitchen as he shrugged into trousers and an old shirt. He caught a glimpse of himself in his mirror and grimaced. Scrawny and scarred and pale, with his fine hair sticking up in every direction, he was no Adonis. A few quick charms tamed his hair but nothing could help the scars.

"Where's your flat?" he asked her after he joined her. He set the kettle on to heat and began spooning tea into a pot.

She looked uncomfortable. "I guess I'll go find one today," she said. "I've been living with Ron, but that's out now, obviously."

"Can't you crash with a friend for a bit?" he asked her. "Bit much to have to find a flat in one day."

"Harry?" she asked. "You mean my exes best friend? I think he took Ron out last night for the customary 'more fish in the sea' pub crawl so that might be uncomfortable." She made a derisive snort before adding, "I'd not put him in the middle like that, at any rate."

Draco couldn't help but think that Weasley seemed to have had no compunction about making Potter choose sides. He cast his mind back. He'd watched her at Hogwarts but it was true Hermione had never been the girl surrounded by a bevy of giggling girlfriends. It has been her and Potter and Weasley from the beginning. Without them she was alone.

He poured water into the teapot and set the lid over it. "You could stay here," he offered with what he hoped sounded like indifference. "No one's ever used the guest room. I know the place is a bit small but -"

"All I've really got is clothing," she said. "And books. Ron and I rented a furnished place and his mum gave us her old cast offs for kitchen stuff so...but I don't want to impose."

"You wouldn't be," he told her. She looked unsure until he added, "Unless you'd rather not stay with Death Eaters. We're not a popular crowd; you'll be branding yourself as undesirable too if you move in"

It was, he learned as years passed, the easiest way to manipulate her. All he had to do was appeal to her sense of herself as brave and a champion of the oppressed and she was putty in his hands. Sometimes she'd smile at him as she jumped the way he wanted her to and he'd know she saw through him and did what he wanted but quailed at asking for directly out of love. That first morning, though, she was just offended.

"I don't care about that," she said, bristling. "I'll get my stuff as soon as I finish this tea."


	3. Chapter 3

Hermione had her bag half-filled before Ron came through the door. She'd just finished putting all her clothes in it, dirty laundry carefully sorted out from the basket, wrapped in an old bag from the produce stand, and tucked back down behind her clean jumpers. He watched her from the door of the flat they'd shared since she'd told him she wouldn't live at the Burrow with his mother for a few minutes as neither spoke and she began pulling books off the shelf and dropping them into the bag.

Undetectable extension charms, she thought to herself, were handy little things. They were good for when you needed to go on the run and good for when you needed to move away from your lover of multiple years.

"Where did you go last night?" he asked.

"Ran into an old friend - acquaintance really - down by the Thames and ended up going back to their house for dinner."

"Long dinner," Ron observed.

"How was your pub crawl?" she asked as she checked the inside cover of one book. They'd each had a copy of this one and she didn't want to end up with his by mistake. At least none of the furniture was hers. The place had come furnished and Molly had shown up one afternoon with armloads of plates, old dishes, old towels and the like. Every corner of the place was either too generic for words or smeared with the family of her now-ex. She'd never minded and only now as she cleared away her things did she realize how few of them there were. She looked up above the bookshelf at the Holyhead Harpies banner stuck to the wall atop the faded wallpaper. The whole place seemed suddenly dull and washed out, though how anything could had gotten enough sun to fade was a mystery. The only window in what had been their bedroom looked out at the brick wall of the adjoining building. Dull, dark, faded and not hers. At least Theo and Draco's place got light.

"The pub crawl was good," Ron said. "Though I ended up sleeping at home."

"Bully for you." The book was hers and she added it to her bag along with three more.

"Who was this mysterious friend?" Ron asked. He hadn't moved from the doorway and she glanced over at him. "Dean Thomas?"

"Theo Nott." Hermione supposed she should feel bad at how much vindictive pleasure she got from the spasm of distaste that Ron tried to hide.

"I didn't realize you were friends," was all he said.

She shrugged. "We took several advanced classes together sixth year." She dropped five more books into her bag. "Not things you were interested in. Runes. Arithmancy. Things like that. You can't be in multiple classes with someone, especially those small, upper-level ones, and not get to know them at least a little."

"Sounds fascinating. Fuck him?"

She almost dropped the book she was putting into her bag and clenched her jaw. "Not in sixth year, no," she said. "I was a little focused on trying to fight evil and the like. Not a lot of time for dating. Maybe you remember?"

"Last night?"

Hermione swept the last of the bottom shelf of books off and dumped them all into her bag and decided that was good enough. If anything on that last shelf had been Ron's he could ask for it back, assuming he even noticed it was gone. "I remember last night just fine," she said. "How about you?"

"That wasn't what I meant."

"And it's not your concern." She stood up and hefted her bag, still amazed the spell took care of weight issues as well as size. "I'm sure I'm much too boring to fuck an old school chum I hadn't seen in years after several glasses of truly excellent wine in his gorgeous flat." She brushed past him. "Owl me if you find anything I left," she said before she apparated away, back to the fifth floor walkup with the good light, the man she'd barely known in school, and the man she had thought she'd known all too well.

. . . . . . . . . .

Draco looked too pleased with himself. That was Theo's first thought when he emerged from their bedroom to find the man sipping tea and washing up the dishes they'd left the night before. "Where's Granger?" he asked. He'd planned on making her eggs as he'd promised, and he found himself a little disappointed she'd taken off before he'd been able to make good on that. Running into her again has woken up old fantasies and that schoolboy crush and he'd have liked to have chatted again, maybe gotten her address so they could keep in touch.

"She went back to get her things," Draco said.

It took a moment for the implication of that to puncture the shell of Theo's morning dullness. "I'm sorry," he said. "What?"

"She went back to whatever sad little flat she shared with the Weasel to collect her stuff," Draco said. He eyed the pan that was busy scrubbing itself and he must have decided it was good enough because the pan floated over to the drainer and began to drip onto the counter. As usual, Draco had forgotten to lay a towel out and water began to collect and advance toward the edge of the counter. Theo sighed and yanked a towel out from a drawer and tried to halt the wet progression with only partial success.

"Where's she moving to?" Theo asked, somewhat dreading the answer.

"Here," Draco said.

Theo sat down on a stool and closed his eyes. "Please tell me you're joking," he said.

Draco turned from his work at the sink, leaving a brush going back and forth across the same plate, and said, "I thought you'd be pleased."

Theo counted to ten in his head.

"You _like_ her," Draco said. " _I_ like her. Why shouldn't she live here?"

"Because we barely _know_ her," Theo said. "Because what if she isn't the girl you've built all these fantasies around and then she's here and we're all tripping all over one another all the time?" He tried to imagine what it would be like to have Hermione Granger across the breakfast table every morning and reading on the couch and doing all her brilliant, hard-working, swotty things where he could see her. Then he tried to imagine what it would be like after she left. He wasn't sure which seemed worse. Draco, champion of poor impulse decision-making skills, had struck again. "It's one thing to have her over for dinner, even having her spend the night in the guest room, but every day? A flatmate?"

Draco got that mulish look he got when he was going to refuse to listen to reason. "She didn't have anywhere to go," he said. "Was she supposed to just go back and live with Ronald Weasley even though they broke up?"

"She has friends," Theo said. He thought of the not-quite-crying woman they'd found at the river whose best friend had gone out drinking with her ex. "She must."

"Ginny Weasley?" Draco asked. "Her ex's sister?"

Theo said, "Get me a cup of that tea."

Draco poured some from the pot he'd brewed earlier, added three lumps of sugar, and handed it over. He still looked pleased with himself. "She showed up at the foot of our bed this morning," he said. "She had designs upon my fair person." He let his eyes rake over Theo's body, still clad in pajama bottoms and a t-shirt he had to have added thinking Hermione would be here. "Yours too, I assume."

"You confuse your desires with hers," Theo said, though he could feel himself stirring at the idea. He'd have set the tea down and dragged Draco back to the bedroom, or maybe not, and indulged in the nice, safe fantasy of a Hermione Granger who wanted them both while fucking the man if she weren't going to show up at any moment. The reality of having her in the guest room was not likely to be anywhere near as simple as the images he had in his head when he thought of her.

The hesitant knock at the door kept him from giving Draco even more of a piece of his mind. The woman had been invited to stay and now manners meant he had to be gracious no matter how agonizing having her there might turn out to be. He gave Draco one last, murderous look before moving to open the door.

. . . . . . . . . .

Hermione hesitated before knocking. This really seemed like such a bad idea. She barely knew either of them. What if they were crazy? Or what if Malfoy had invited her to stay and Theo wasn't happy with the idea? It wasn't as if she was sure Malfoy - Draco, she corrected herself in her head - had taken time to ask his partner if having her join them was an acceptable idea.

When Theo opened the door she had to work to keep her eyes on his face. It wasn't fair for any man to look quite that good in pajamas and an old shirt and she was reminded how she'd sometimes coped with stress that horrible sixth year by indulging in unlikely fantasies about the lanky Slytherin who was in all her hardest classes. She'd already been in love, or something, with Ron by that point but she hadn't been blind, and if Theo Nott had been the exact wrong choice for reasons that began with his Death Eater father and moved on from there, he'd also been so very, very clever. She couldn't fathom how she was going to live with him without saying something pathetically wrong sooner or later, something that made her drunken proposition of the night before seem like the height of social grace. It was one thing to suggest casual sex with an old chum, and quite another to admit she'd used to have childishly indecent thoughts about his body. The first was sophisticated. The second, pathetic.

This really was a terrible idea but she was here now, all her stuff in tow, and she couldn't gracefully leave. "This is just until I find a place," were the first words out of her mouth. "You won't even know I'm here. I'll be out at work most of the time, or off hunting for a flat."

Something she couldn't place clouded Theo Nott's dark blue eyes, but he held the door and smiled graciously and she took a step back into his light-filled flat. "You are welcome for as long as you want to stay," he said.

"No one else wants that guest room, trust me," Malfoy - Draco! - said from the kitchen where he lounged with his back to the sink, a cup of tea in his hands, and a smirk on his angular face.

"I think that plate is clean," Hermione said without thinking as she eyed the magical dishwashing going on behind him.

Draco spun and swore. The brush still scrubbed away at the now immaculate plate but the water had begun to fill the sink and run over onto the floor.

"Is that all you brought?" Theo asked. He looked at the bag in her hand and then out past the door as though expecting to see a pile of luggage.

"All my worldly goods," Hermione confirmed, holding up the satchel. At his horrified look she was tempted to sniffle and tell him she'd lost everything in the breakup with Ron save the clothes on her back and a book of love poetry the rotter had thrown at her head, but she decided he might not appreciate what passed for her sense of humor. A lot of people didn't.

Ron certainly hadn't.

"Undetectable extension charm," she said. "I could fit a house in there."

Theo looked relieved and impressed. "That's a tricky bit of magic," he said. "Do you need any help unpacking?"

She shook her head. "I'll just leave most of it tucked away," she said. "I doubt I'll be here long. I really don't want to impose, and it seems silly to take it all out just to put it back in again when I find a place." Theo looked even more relieved, though he tried to hide it, and she wanted more than anything to crawl into a hole. Her worst fear was true: _Malfoy_ hadn't bothered to ask whether it was okay to invite her to stay.

"I could - ," she began.

"Have you eaten," he asked, cutting her off. "I think I promised eggs."

She hadn't, and he had, and while he got the eggs out and began cooking she dropped her bag in the guest room and noted that, while it had a toilet attached to it that she'd used the night before, it looked like she would have to use the shower she assumed was off the master bedroom. Well, that wouldn't be at all awkward, now would it? Did she even own a robe?

Shite. She'd have to ask to use their towels. She hadn't thought to bring one from her old place.

When she went back out into the main room, Theo was piling scrambled eggs onto her plate and she took a fork from Draco Malfoy and dug into them. Even after the dinner the night before she didn't expect much. She was used to meals that were thrown together with the least skill possible interspersed with elaborate and huge spreads at Ron's mother's. Her eyes widened involuntarily when she tasted the eggs. Theo had mixed something - probably several somethings - into them. They were excellent, far better than she could ever remember having.

"This is amazing," she said, before eating another bite.

"I know," Draco said. He sounded inexplicably smug.


	4. Chapter 4

Theo headed off the witch's plan to go out to dinner. The thought of her yelling at some maître d', while tempting, also led inexorably to the vision of the encounter being written up in the _Prophet._ Everyone liked a bit of gossip, after all, and there's nothing quite so grand as reveling in the woes of the fallen. The children of Death Eaters definitely counted as fallen, as disgraced, as delicious to whisper about in hushed, faux-shocked tones. 'Thought they'd get served,' he could hear people say to one another. 'Can you imagine? And that Granger girl, in bad company.'

He wasn't sure he could bear to have her tarred and feathered with their brush, so he made noises about how he'd planned to make something he'd just read about and implied going out would be an imposition. She backed down almost immediately and asked instead if there were anything she could do to help. He gave her a hunk of cheese to grate, opened another bottle of wine and poured her a glass, and asked her whether she'd read the most recent book that had come out by a politician. He listened with relief as she dropped all comments about dining out to instead excoriate the book as narcissistic pablum.

He agreed. It was a dreadful book written by a dreadful man who'd managed to play both sides against the middle during the war and who now spun his cowardice into a tale that might have met the truth once at a party. They hadn't chatted.

"Find any flats to go check out?" Draco asked when she began to run down. She'd spent much of the afternoon with the paper spread out before her, circling listings and then making calls. She accioed the marked up section and handed it over to him and he skimmed through the listings before crossing one of them out.

"I beg your pardon?" Hermione Granger said in a somewhat predictable huff. "I was going to go to that one first thing in the morning. I've already floo-called to set up a time and - "

"I wouldn't let a woman I hated live in that neighborhood," Draco said flatly.

"I can handle myself," she said. She set the wine down with a thunk and Theo watched the liquid slide up the inside of the glass and almost escape. She was a lightweight, that was undeniable. Half a glass and she was already losing the edges of her control.

The lightweight in question crossed her arms as she sat on the stool at their counter and glared at Draco. "I survived a war," she said. "I think I can handle a dodgy neighborhood."

"I'm sure you can," Draco said, "but there has to be a flat available somewhere that doesn't have aurors visiting the block every other day to look for Snatchers still harbouring delusions their pathetic hatreds make them Dark wizards worth fearing."

Theo leaned over and looked at the address Draco had crossed out and blanched. "You are joking about that one, right?" he asked her.

"The price is right," she said. "I'm not exactly high up the food chain at work. It's a nearly entry-level government job with the pay-cheque to match. I can't have… this." She waved her hand around to indicate the loft.

Draco and Theo exchanged glances.

"Well," Draco said, "you can't have that either, not unless you plan on having one of us there all hours of the day and night, and that would be a pain in the arse, so no."

"I'm sure it's fine," Hermione said. "And since when - "

"It's not fine." Theo knew he sounded exasperated and he tried to moderate his tone but based on the way she transferred her glare from Draco to him, he didn't succeed. "It's dangerous in that part of town. The idea of you even going there in the daylight sends chills down my spine. Living there? As a Muggle-born? You'd be in St. Mungo's within a week."

Hermione glowered but the stubborn looks on both their faces seemed to quell her, at least slightly. "Don't see why you care," she finally said as she unbent enough to take a sip of the wine. "I'm hardly your problem."

"That neighborhood is everyone's problem," Draco said. "Or should be."

"How can you not know which are the… one of us will have to go with you," Theo said as he turned back to the stove to give more of his attention to the risotto. "Left to your own devices you'd end up next door to a felix dealer."

"Or living with Death Eaters," she said.

Theo didn't even have to turn around. He could feel Draco's flinch, though the man covered it with a quick quip. "Or worse," he said. "Weasleys."

She sighed and looked half-miserable and Draco, who'd always had a feel for people's weak points if no real sense on when to let them lie, began to needle her. "Tell me, did he leave his laundry lying around? Half-empty cups of take-away coffee on the table? Dog eared books on the floor? I want to know everything."

Theo listened as she picked up her glass, set it down, and then seemed to fuss with the grater she had spelled to take care of the cheese he'd handed her. "He did," she said at last. The words seemed to be pulled reluctantly from her as if she balanced between wanting to not criticize the man to people who'd never been sympathetic to them and needing to release at least some of the inevitable post breakup anger. "Not books - Ron was never one for reading, but the laundry was a… I read once that when women leave their husbands, it's never because they caught them cheating or anything. It's because they just got to the point they couldn't stand the idea of picking dirty pants up off the floor one more time."

"You weren't _married_ were you," Theo asked in sudden horror. Not that he supposed it mattered, not really, but it certainly complicated things. He'd turned around by the time she'd stammered out a series of 'nos', looking just as horrified as he felt. Her eyes traced over his arms with a look he'd seen on Draco's face and he wondered for a brief moment if he was misreading the frank appreciation in them before she wiped her face clear.

"No," she said. "Not married."

"Glad to know your judgement is only mostly bad," Draco said.

She began to look outraged again and he smirked at her. "I've seen the address of where you think you could live. You're an idiot."

"I'd be fine," she said again. She reached for the paper but he pulled it away from her and held it up, enough out of her reach she'd have had to stretch and fight him for it. She settled for scowling and having more wine instead. "Do you plan to be this bossy the whole time I'm staying here?" she asked.

"We're just looking out for you," Theo said. He began to spoon the rice onto plates, followed by the poached fish he'd been experimenting with. He sprinked on the cheese and sighed. This seemed like a bad idea but it was better than facing down a restaurant. "You have a history of odd choices. Just the merest passing acquaintance with you lets me know that." He handed her a plate. "Tell me if that's any good."

She dug a fork into the meal, tasted it, and her eyes widened. "This is amazing," she said around a mouthful of fish. "You're amazing."

"He is," Draco agreed.

"It's better than what you've been eating, I'm sure," Theo said. The sentence had been meant to be a bit of a goad but came out as a rather pathetic request for reassurance. She heard it and set her fork down and looked at him seriously.

"There's no comparison," she said.

When the food had been eaten and the dishes cleared, Draco excused himself to take a shower and Theo found himself alone with the witch for the first time. Draco had had a moment that morning when he'd invited her to stay, but it was the first time since they'd had her back for dinner the night before that Theo hadn't had Draco there as a crutch. Being with her suddenly felt unbearably awkward. He swallowed several times and tried not to stare. He'd spent so much of their sixth year in school watching her he probably still had every curl of her hair memorized. Even years later, scarred by war, he thought he'd have been able to pick her out of a crowd by the way she set her shoulders alone.

It seemed, as he sat there without speaking, embarrassingly stalker-like to know so much about how a woman sat and moved when you'd hardly spoken to her. No one wants to fess up his adolescent obsession to its object, even years later.

"He had nightmares," he said abruptly.

"Draco?" she asked.

Theo nodded.

"I know," she said. "I've… you mentioned it, and this morning I…." She turned her head away and looked out at the city that sparkled though their windows. "When I walked in to your room I was going to… well, it doesn't matter and it's a bit… it doesn't matter. He saw me and thought I was a dream."

"Flattering," Theo said carefully.

"Not when he expected me to be drenched in blood," Hermione said.

Theo nodded, though she wasn't looking at him and didn't see the gesture. He knew the content of Draco's dreams. Horrors, all of them. Hogwarts had been a nightmare that final year, and Malfoy Manor had been more of one. Draco had escaped the war alive and unimprisoned, but hardly unscathed. "Do you want me to muffle the room?" Theo asked. "The whole flat has a _muffliato_ on it so the screams don't bother the neighbors, but… he doesn't have them every night, of course, but I could - "

"Please don't put yourself out," Hermione said. "It's already incredibly kind of you to let me stay while I'm looking for a flat. I don't want to impose, or ask you to do anything out of the ordinary on my account."

He watched her mouth move. It mesmerized him enough it took him just a beat too long to reassure her it was no trouble at all to cast a trivial charm to silence their room, and so she assumed it was indeed a problem and said again that she'd be fine, and to please not go to any trouble.

"Don't worry if you hear him, then," Theo said. "It's… you can just ignore it."

She didn't, of course, and she did. Theo supposed it was probably too much to ask that someone not react to the sound of their own name screamed in terror and pleading and wished he'd cast the _muffliato_ charm anyway, or that Draco had not had a bad night, or that the man had at least just screamed incoherently. That she might have let go. Not her name.

She was in their room before Theo could have counted to five, not that he'd even been thinking of her. Or he'd been thinking of her the way Draco saw her, cowering under the edge of a knife. Theo wasn't even sure Draco was awake when he turned to see the real woman standing in his doorway, wearing pajamas that made it clear she hadn't dressed to entice at night in some time. Draco began to babble out the same apologies he usually made to the dream woman. He'd not meant it. He hadn't understood. He wished he'd been able to stop it, wished it so much. I'm sorry, he said over and over again. Granger, I'm so very sorry.

She sat down on the edge of their mattress and placed a hand over Draco's mouth. Theo waited for him to recoil or shudder but he just fell silent and stared at her in the dim room. "Hermione," she said.

There was a pause while both men sat in the darkness and listened to her speak. "You told me we should use first names," she said and Draco began to shudder. "It's Hermione."

"I'm so sorry," Draco said again, the words blurred and broken by the hand over his mouth. "Hermione, I'm so sorry."

"I know," she said. She ran a hand over the rough stubble on his face. "It was a terrible time. It's passed. It's the past. I'm here now."

"You are," he said. Theo knew Draco was awake by that point when he repeated the words, wonder filling his voice. "You _are."_


	5. Chapter 5

Draco woke up with a sense of humiliation he couldn't place at first. Then, he remembered. He almost threw up as the shame of having had Hermione Granger witness him in the grip of the worst of his nightmares washed over him, When the wave receded and left him trembling he had the bitter thought that Theo, still blissfully asleep next to him, arm flung out, had been right as usual. Having the woman live here was nothing like the fantasies where she appeared only when he wasn't falling apart.

He supposed he should be glad she seemed to offer absolution instead of taking pleasure in his ongoing guilt.

He wished she'd just stayed in her own room. He wished he'd never invited her to stay.

He kept wishing that as he showered and washed away the stale sweat of another night of memories. He wished that as he pulled on trousers and a t-shirt. He wished that as he padded out of his bedroom and into the main, open area of his flat. He wished that until he saw her, cup cradled between her hands, standing at the giant windows looking out. Merlin, she was so beautiful. She hadn't changed out of the ratty flannel pajamas she'd had on the night before when she'd sat, hand cupping his face, and told him it was over, that it was fine, that he needed to forgive himself. She looked rumpled and awful and so domestic he wanted to bury his face in her hair and just inhale.

He suspected that would be weird.

"Morning," he said.

She spun, so startled he realized she hadn't heard him.

"Morning," she said. "Looks to be a pretty day."

"Shame to waste it," Draco said in what passed for agreement. "We should go to Regent's. Go look at the animals in the zoo. They serve tea now."

Hermione shook her head and he watched her as she talked about how she'd arranged to have the day off so she could go look for a flat and she needed to do that. The light hit her curls as she talked, and he let her natter on for a bit before he said, "That can't take all day. I'll go round with you this morning, we'll look the places on your list over, then meet Theo for tea and lions."

"It's a Muggle zoo," she pointed out.

Draco gave her a smile that tried not to be sad. "In Muggle London, I'm just some anonymous bloke with a bit of a posh accent and a faded tattoo."

"But you hate - "

"Being spit on," he said. "I know it's a weird quirk. So many people just love it. But I've never quite taken to it, and if learning to use pounds and dress badly means I can walk about and not be noticed, well, Slytherins are pragmatic, Hermione. Not self-sacrificing. Not prone to tilt at windmills. That would be your lot."

"People spit on you?"

Draco shrugged. "Only a few times." He pulled out a quill and began to jot a quick note to Theo telling the man they'd be back around noon to meet up and go to the zoo. When he glanced up Hermione was staring at him, outrage in her eyes, and he tried not to be warmed by that. "You aren't dressed," was all he said. "No one's going to let you any flat if you show up like that."

"Right." She bit her lip. "Can I borrow the shower?" she said, the words falling over one another in her obvious rush to get them out. Draco flushed as he realized they'd really been horrible hosts, and hadn't done much of anything to make her comfortable other than show her the guest room. Had she even eaten breakfast? Was she afraid to make herself toast for fear of seeming to intrude. He began to ask if she needed food but she was still talking. "And towels? I didn't think to bring any… all the ones I had were really Molly's old ones and - "

"Just don't wake up Theo," Draco said as he waved her toward his room. Maybe they could get something from a kiosk on the street. "Extra towels are under the sink."

. . . . . . . . . .

Draco could see the landlord recognizing him. The man was already preparing the story he would tell his friends over a pint later. _An actual Death Eater. Nah, didn't see the Mark. He had long sleeves on. Knew who the blighter was because of the pictures in the paper of his trial, though._

Draco put on his most bored sneer in the face of the man's delight at having found a good bit of gossip and said, "Look around, Hermione. See if the place would suit." The neighborhood was certainly fine, and there was a little place that sold curry on the corner the landlord talked up as he led Hermione though the flat with an ingratiating burr to his voice and only the occasional glance at Draco. I'm not going to suddenly try to summon the Dark Lord, Draco thought to himself. You can stop worrying. I'm probably happier than you are that the fucker is dead.

The place really wasn't bad, and Draco had to work to find a reason to get Hermione to reject it. At last, when he opened the cupboard under the sink in the kitchen, he found one. Rather, he found several as they scurried away and wriggled into cracks. He raised his brows in the most Malfoy sneer he could manage and said, "Cockroaches?"

"It's an old building," the landlord said defensively. "You won't find any of these old places that don't have some kind of - "

"Aren't you using basic pest control spell methods?" Hermione asked. She sounded put out, as if he'd admitted he never brushed his teeth. A quick look at the yellowing and crooked smile the fawning man wore and Draco had to hide a smirk at how unfortunately apt his mental simile was.

"Pest control costs money," the man said. "We bring a wizard in every six months, but with these old - "

"You could learn how to do it yourself," Hermione said. "It's not hard."

"Shall we move on?" Draco asked, arm held out to help her through the doorway.

Hermione shuddered as she looked back at the kitchen. "Yes," she said. "Please."

A set of low-level thugs tried to interest her in what they claimed was a love potion on the stoop of the next building. Draco stood, hand twitching to grab his wand, as Hermione lectured them about consent and did they understand that what they were doing wasn't right. He managed to hustle her away before either of the pair became more than amused at her righteous tirade, but one of them called after them, "Give her a good fuck, man. You need to settle that bitch down."

He had to grab her arm and pull her forcibly down the street after that. "We'll just cross this one off the list," he said. "I don't think you'd like your neighbors."

They waited for thirty increasingly uncomfortable minutes in the lobby of the third building while tired women with young kids in tow passed back and forth in front of them. One of the children had what Draco was forced to admit were a very impressive set of lungs he displayed by screaming at full volume that he did not want to go to see his auntie and that he hated his mum. The woman slapped the child, which had no effect, and looked at Hermione with what seemed to be an expectation she'd find commiseration and sympathy for her plight. Hermione forced the appropriate expression onto her face but when the landlord still wasn't there after five more minutes, she said, "Maybe this one isn't meant to be."

Draco nodded. "There's no hurry," he said. "You're welcome to stay as long as you want."

Hermione eyed the building. "I hate to impose," she said.

"We have a guest room no one uses," Draco said. "And I'd tell you if I wanted you out."

She smiled at that. "I suppose you would," she said. "You never were very subtle."

"Right," he said. "I'm transparent as glass. Shall we head back, pick up Theo?"

. . . . . . . . .

Draco sat on a bench at the zoo, feet stretched out in front of him, and watched Theo and Hermione lean on the edge of the otter exhibit. She'd insisted on coming here first and had been watching the little creatures play with contagious delight. Theo kept threatening to throw popcorn in and see if the creatures would eat it while Hermione hissed that the signs very clearly said to _not_ feed the animals and couldn't he _read?_

Draco couldn't remember being so happy. The sun was out, they hadn't found a flat that suited her, no one stared because boys with public school vowels were far less interesting than hippos and komodo dragons. Theo's eyes crinkled up in the way he did when he was having fun and he laughed with a relaxed ease Draco cherished and heard far too infrequently. He watched the witch as she scolded him with those eyes crinkled and he gave her clearly faked looks of shame before he pretended he was going to throw the snack in anyway. She grabbed his hand and then froze, her hand on his, until he pulled away and tossed the popcorn into his own mouth. "What does the sign say again?" he asked. "Feed the animals?"

Hermione made an inarticulate noise of frustration and stomped her foot, but she couldn't stop smiling and Draco sat and felt the sun on his shoulders and wished this could be life always. Hermione had grabbed Theo's popcorn container and angled herself so he couldn't grab it without at least a wee bit of effort and Theo pretended to reach around first one side and then the other to snag it with no success. Finally he raised his hands in mock defeat and they went back to admiring the sleek brown otters as they sunbathed and splashed in their pool.

"They're cute," he heard Theo say. "I would have expected you to want to look at lions."

"I like otters," Hermione said. She nibbled on her snack and leaned against the railing while Theo moved slightly closer. He wasn't quite touching her, true, but to any casual observer they looked like a couple. Draco liked it. "They're playful and happy," Hermione said, "and… it just seems like nothing could possibly bother them." She glanced back at Draco and jerked her head, a clear order to join them, and he did. As he snagged a handful of popcorn and began putting one piece at a time into his mouth, she added, a trifle wistfully, "It must be nice to have no worries the way they do."

"Oh, I'm sure they've got loads of worries," Theo said. He pointed to one scampering creature who stopped as if she knew she was being talked about and set her little paws on the rock and looked up at Theo. "See that one? She didn't get an invitation to the otter ball, and she's wondering if she should swim over to the committee chair and ask if it got lost in the post, but she's worried it wasn't and then what does she say. It could all be very uncomfortable."

Draco picked up the game. "That one," he said, waving his hand toward one that was swimming around and around a branch that reached down into the pond in their enclosure. "He didn't get a promotion. He's still just an otter flunky and he has aspirations, Hermione. He wants to be top otter."

Otter flunky pulled himself onto a rock and began to shake water off his whiskers.

"How about that one?" Hermione asked, pointing to one who hadn't moved since they'd arrived other than to turn over and get more comfortable for what appeared to be an extended afternoon nap.

"Oh," Draco said. "She's just a bit tuckered out from saving the world. Needs a little time to herself, maybe a friend or two to chew on fish with." He glanced over at the sign. "They do eat fish, right?"

"Omnivores," Hermione said.

"Fish then," Draco said. "Or maybe rat."

Hermione made a face. "Rat," she said. "Even at our worst, we never had to eat rat."

Draco rather tentatively slipped a hand around her shoulder. "I'm sorry," he said. She didn't shake his hand off, however, so he wasn't _that_ sorry.

Her smile was a little wan when she looked at him. "Just tell me rat isn't some trendy new protein Theo plans to cook up and make me eat and it'll be fine."

"I'd go vegetarian first," Theo said. He gave an exaggerated shudder. "Stick with us, Hermione, and I can promise no rat."

"Deal," she said.

. . . . . . . . . .

 ** _A/N - Thanks to stefartemis and shayalonnie, who alpha read this for me. No one beta reads it so all the typos are mea culpa._**


	6. Chapter 6

"Voila, rat," Theo said as he slid the plate in front of Hermione. She giggled. Two bottles of Draco's bordeaux later and she knew she was pissed but she didn't care. The wine was good. The company was good. Tomorrow she'd go back and waste her time a little more getting paid not very much to accomplish less, but tonight she'd eat Theo's fine cooking and pretend life could just be this for at least a little while.

"It's not rat," she said. She picked up her fork and poked at it before giving Theo a look of what she hoped came across as deepest suspicion. "Right?"

His look of beatific innocence would have scared her if she'd thought for a moment he actually _would_ serve rat. Since she knew his aristocratic palate would revolt, she just stuck her fork into what looked more like shepherd's pie than rodent and took a bite. "Yum," she said. "This is the best rat I've ever had, Theo. You have rat talents." She set her fork down so she could have another sip of the excellent wine and missed the 'she's cut off' look the boys exchanged as well as the way that second wine bottle disappeared under the counter. "You should open a rat restaurant."

"I think I'll pass," Theo said.

Draco leaned on one hand and watched her. "Elbows on the table," she said in a sing-song and he rolled his eyes.

"Who knew Gryffindor produced such sticklers for table manners," Draco said.

"Not Gryffindor," she said. "My mum. She had rules and you would follow them, or else. No elbows on the table. No books at the table. Eat all your vegetables or no dessert." She took another bite before adding with a certain sad despair for all the horrible desserts her mother had tried to cook. "Not that dessert was very good when prepared by a woman who thought sugar was the enemy."

"Sugar?" Theo asked. She could see him try to figure out what, exactly, was wrong with sugar.

"Dentist," she said. When that didn't clear things up she said, "Tooth healer."

"Oh," he said. He took a sip of his own wine. "My dessert preferences aren't really about sugar."

"Really?" Hermione tipped her head to the side and studied Theo. Funny. She'd watched him that whole sixth year and she was still noticing things about him. His eyes were such a dark blue they looked almost black in this dim light. At the zoo, in the sun, they'd been lighter. Draco's eyes were always the same grey but Theo's seemed to shift. "What do you like for dessert?"

She realized the double entendre the moment it came out of her mouth and tried to recover. "I mean, do you like fruit, or cheese, or…"

He let her stutter her way to silence and she took another bite of the excellent dinner and chewed to avoid having to talk any more. She wanted to kick herself. Two boys had been her best friends her whole adolescence and she'd still walked right into that. She should have known better. At last Theo said, "I'm fond of berries and whipped cream."

She took another bite and then another because she was fairly sure there was no good answer to that. "I enjoyed the zoo," she said, trying to change the subject. "That was a good idea."

"I'm glad," Draco said. "Pity none of the flats were quite right, though. That was a bit frustrating."

"Fancy that," Theo said. "None of them."

"Cockroaches," Hermione said. "And drug dealers."

"Really?" Theo looked at Draco who raised his eyebrows. "I would have thought mice but cockroaches? How filthy were these places?"

"Really," Draco confirmed. "Cockroaches and love potions."

Theo made a face that made his opinion of that clear. "If you need a drug," he said with disgust.

Draco shrugged. "I don't have any sympathy," he said at the tiny noise she made in protest of what looked like his dismissal, "but I've never really tried to seduce a woman. Maybe it's harder than being with your childhood sweetheart for years."

Hermione bit the inside of her cheek and stared at her plate. "True enough," she admitted. "It's not like I've been dating lately." She'd had quite enough of her own childhood sweetheart. Who knew he'd had such viciousness ready at the tip of his tongue for those last fights as their relationship died and they put a stake through its heart. Not, of course, that she'd been much kinder. "Still, love potions are vile."

"Agreed," Theo said.

"I wonder if it's different," Draco said. He seemed lost in thought and when Hermione nudged him with her foot he said, "Kissing a girl. I suppose it must be."

She wasn't sure what possessed her, though it was probably a combination of too much wine and too much sun, but she leaned over and pressed her mouth into his. She'd really just meant it to be nothing, if she'd meant anything at all. The tiniest peck. Nothing. Just so he could say he'd kissed a girl.

That might have worked if she hadn't leaned too far and toppled into him, spilling her wine. He had to grab her with both hands and brace himself against the bar to keep from falling over. He inhaled and then kissed her back, a mouth that tasted of wine on hers, and wiry arms wrapped around her holding her steady. She had her lips parted and had her own hands sliding up those arms with muscles that were hard for all he was slender as she thought she'd never have known he hadn't kissed girls before. He kissed her and kissed her and she kissed him back without a thought except that her stomach was filled with nervous flutters and her hands shook and she wanted him. She _wanted_ him.

"It must not be that different," she said when at last she pulled back to look at him. His eyes were as wide as hers surely were. She reached a hand out to him as she licked her lips and he opened his mouth as if he were going to say something.

Theo made a noise and she twisted to look at him and remembered and felt all the wine and all the giddy delight drain away. She backed away from Draco and fumbled for her seat as she said, "I'm so sorry, Theo. It was the wine and… it won't happen again. I'm so sorry."

"Hermione," Theo said. "It's fine."

Her stool had fallen over and she looked from dark-haired man with his inscrutable eyes to the blond who looked stunned and fled to her room before either could say anything else, stopping at her door to apologize again. "It was just the wine," she said. "I didn't mean it. Don't worry I'll… I know you didn't mean it either."

. . . . . . . . .

Hermione left the flat before either man had ventured out of his room. It was good to go to work early, she told herself. She wasn't _avoiding_ them. She was being responsible. She hadn't managed to find a flat and she'd kissed someone else's boyfriend, but she could at least get some of her paperwork sorted.

There was a lot of paperwork. She shared what passed for an office with five other employees, one of whom always left half-eaten muffins on her desk. There was no window and the only plant someone had brought in to try to cheer the place up drooped from where it had been shoved on top of a grey filing cabinet as though it had given up and was only waiting to die. She watered it and patted one of its dusty leaves. "It's ok, little lily," Hermione said. "I'll try to smuggle you home to flat with an actual window when I get one. Just hang on until I'm settled and I'll rescue you."

The plant didn't react. She supposed it didn't believe her. After months stuck in this airless, lightless hell, she didn't blame it. She fetched herself a cup of tea, picked up yesterday's muffin from Charlotte's desk and binned it, and settled down to go through the reports on creature rights to make sure all the incident complaints were properly filled out. A woman was accusing a siren of luring her husband off. There were concerns a vampire had moved into an abandoned warehouse and was eating rats. She had kissed Draco Malfoy. A centaur had petitioned to move. She'd kissed him on the mouth with her tongue. A man was sure his neighbor were abusing their house elf. Hermione set that one aside to look at further. And he'd kissed her back. He'd put his tongue in her mouth and kissed her until she'd clung to him and wanted to pull off that expensive shirt he'd had on and fell his skin all along hers and she really needed to focus on this paperwork.

She sent a memo requesting information on the errant husband. Experience suggested it was probably less an issue of a siren who had lured him a way and more some girl he'd met at a pub. These complaints came in with a certain predictable regularity. It isn't he doesn't love _me_ , women would say as they jabbed their quills into the parchment and filled out the form. It's that she's an unregistered veela. She was a siren. She's a _creature._

What had she been thinking? Draco Malfoy had a boyfriend. He'd been standing right there. They'd opened up their home to her when she needed a place to stay and were helping her find a flat. Her behavior had been unforgivable.

She wondered what it would be like to kiss Theo.

She took a sip of her tea and tried to clear her brain and she pulled the next form forward. Vampires. Rats. If it were true she felt bad for the vampire. Rats. Ugh. She put in a request to have aurors check the site out and leave some of the 'Get Blood at St. Mungos!' pamphlets she'd created the previous year. The memo flittered away and she heard an echo in her brain of Theo saying, "He'd been half in love with you for years." Draco Malfoy had been half in love with her, or what passed for love in the hormonally addled brains of teenagers. She'd thought she'd loved Ron, after all, and that certainly hadn't been her smartest analysis ever.

He'd kissed her back. He'd more than kissed her back. What if what Theo claimed were true? What if he had almost loved her when they'd been younger, when things had been difficult. Could she stay in their flat if she risked disrupting a good and healthy relationship? She really couldn't. That would be wrong. They were happy and she was in the way and kissing Draco had been a really, really bad idea.

She took another sip of tea and approved the centaur's request. That at least she could do without needing approval or sending a request off to be ignored. She hated her job so much some days. Ron had been right when he told her it was a waste of time. It was. She wasn't only not doing good in the world, some days she suspected she was making it worse.

Like when she kissed another man's boyfriend and couldn't stop thinking about it and the way his arms felt and - .

She pinched her mouth together in a grim line. She would control her thoughts and get to work and then she would find a flat and rescue the plant and work some more and get promoted and maybe get a raise and be able to afford a nicer place someday and things would be fine. She'd survived a war. She could survive a few more days of an awkward living arrangement until she found something. She'd just work late and come in early and avoid them as much as she could. She looked at the house elf complaint and decided she's pop over after lunch and check up on this one herself. At least it would get her out of this office for a bit.

. . . . . . . . .

She walked through the line in the Ministry cafeteria, her thoughts still on Draco Malfoy and his tongue and his hands and what other things he might do with those and how she was a horrible, horrible person for even thinking about this and she needed to stop and focus on the house elf file she had tucked under her arm. She took her tray with what she suspected was supposed to be fish and chips and sat down at a table without looking.

"Well, you'll still grace us with your presence?"

Ron Weasley was sitting somewhat down the table from her, Harry next to him. Harry, at least, had the grace to look embarrassed. "Hi, Hermione," he said. "How're things?"

"House elf issues," she said. "A vampire. The usual."

"Don't you have a little elfy slave of your own now that you're living with Nott?" Ron asked.

She set the file down and poked at the fish. "Do you have any vinegar?" she asked Harry. He slid a bottle down to her and, with a quick thanks, she began splashing it over the fish.

"Not going out to lunch with your new besties?" Ron went on.

She set the bottle down. "I thought I'd do that work thing," she said. "And, no, there's no house elf at their flat."

"Their?" Ron's fork stopped halfway to his mouth. "I thought you said you were staying with Nott."

"Nott and Malfoy," Hermione said. She took a bite of the fish and it was just as soggy and bland as she'd suspected it would be. She wondered whether Theo made good fish and chips. She suspected he did. "They live together."

" _Together_ together?" Harry asked.

She nodded. "Nice guest room, too. Big place, tons of light."

"See," Harry glared at Ron. "I told you she wasn't off… I told you she was just staying there. What would those two want with our Hermione? Or her with them? It's just a spare room until she finds her own flat."

"Wankers," Ron said only mostly under his breath.

"They're very nice, actually," Hermione said. "I've had a really pleasant stay with them so far."

"If you say so," he said. "Guess if they're that way I can't be mad."

She narrowed her eyes. "We broke up, Ronald. I don't get to be mad you went on a pub crawl and did Merlin knows what with Circe knows who. You don't get to be mad even if I'm screwing half my department."

"Anyone but them," he muttered. "Ugh, the idea of you with Malfoy just turns my stomach."


	7. Chapter 7

Theo waited until she came back up the stairs. She'd managed to leave before he got up and she'd managed to stretch her day out to an absurd length. He cast yet another tempus charm and tried not to scowl. He was fairly sure the Ministry of Magic didn't expect their employees to stay until after seven. He'd shooed Draco away at five, when he'd expected her to return, and gone from nervous to annoyed to impatient to nervous again.

When she fumbled with the door he could feel himself start to sweat. This was such a Gryffindor thing to do he could barely stand it, but he had a feeling that dealing with her was going to sometimes take a willingness to be bold.

Bravery wasn't really his forte.

The door opened and the witch stepped inside, turned to shut it, and made sure the latch took. When she turned back to face the flat, clearly intending to flee into the guest room before either he or Draco could waylay her, he caught her face in his hands and pressed his mouth to hers.

She froze and he could feel himself wither inside. She'd melted into Draco. He'd _watched_ her melt into the other man just the night before. Her body had curved to every line of his. She'd gasped at Draco's touch and lost herself. Now she just stood stiff and unmoving and Theo cursed himself and cursed his idea and cursed adolescent crushes that never quite went away, not even after wars and pestilence and famine.

Not, to be fair, that he'd ever had to deal with either pestilence or famine.

This was possibly the most humiliating moment he could recall in his entire, misbegotten life.

Then she dropped her bag and reached a hand up to slide it along his shoulder. She pressed herself up onto her toes and all he could think was that she was so much _softer_ than Draco. He skin was smooth and her body was curved and rounded and squishy (a part of him brain kicked in and suggested he never, ever tell her she was squishy) and she was as unlike Draco as any person could be. Her other hand cupped behind his neck and he wrapped his arms around her and pulled her more aggressively against himself and she did the thing he'd watched her do the night before and she just fit him. He groaned and she opened her mouth and the kiss became frantic and heated and then his mouth was on the line of her jaw and her throat and he could feel her pulse start to race and he thought it was so _weird_ to not have an erection pressing against him as an obvious sign his partner was interested. How was a man supposed to read her?

"Theo?" she said, the question breaking his focus and he let her go with some reluctance and stepped back.

"You're late," he said. "I was getting worried."

"What was…?" She trailed off and he smiled in a way he hoped covered how nervous he'd been, how nervous he still was, and ran a hand through his hair.

"I thought… you were upset last night," he began. She opened her mouth to speak and he signed and put a hand over her mouth. "This is hard enough without you playing twenty questions," he said. "I just… it seemed like it would be easier… like you would believe me, if I just showed you it didn't matter instead of trying to tell you."

She closed her eyes and squinched up her face before looking at him again. "I spent the whole day worried I'd somehow - "

"I spent all of sixth year staring at you," he said.

Hermione took a deep breath. "Where's Draco?" she asked.

"I told him to clear out until I'd convinced you it wasn't a problem," Theo said. He reached out and took one of the curls he'd watched dance around her face for so long without permission to touch into his hand. He ran a thumb along the spiral, then tucked the lock behind her ear. "Is it not a problem?"

Her jaw seemed to tremble but she finally shrugged with that Gryffindor devil-may-care nonchalance he'd never mastered and said, "If you say so."

. . . . . . . . . .

Twenty questions, however, was inevitable. He may have held her off long enough to get out his quick explanation, but over a pot of tea she peppered him with questions. Theo supposed you couldn't really ask Hermione Granger to not be inquisitive after you stopped her at the door with a kiss and then admitted you'd stared at her for a whole year. By the time Draco came back, his shoulders tensed against an explosion or loss, Theo was brewing a second pot and he'd confessed how he'd watched but also heard her admission she'd done the same.

"You were just… it was just a crush," she said, her face red, but he'd felt something untangle inside of him that he'd never even known had been knotted up. "You were so smart and quiet and I knew you despised me but - "

"I didn't," he said. "I was supposed to, and I meant to, but then you came up to me in the library that day and - "

"You were just so obviously miserable," Hermione said. "And I remembered what it felt like when Skeeter went after me."

Theo nodded. The way Skeeter had painted her as a teenage harlot, after the innocent and precious Harry Potter, had made him laugh at the time. He remembered the way Draco had fed that reporter stories and thought himself so clever until the children of Death Eaters had been a bigger story than who Harry Potter dated. Or hadn't dated. Anyone with eyes could have seen she and Potter had never been more than friends. Weasley, however. Theo had hated Ron Weasley for a while with the petty, petulant hatred of a child who not only didn't get a treat he wanted, but had to see another boy throw it away.

He felt a wholly unadult urge to gloat. He wanted to take the woman out, an arm slung around her shoulders with casual possessiveness no other man would miss. He wanted to smile at Ron Weasley as he fetched Hermione napkins in Flortescue's and teased her just loudly enough to be heard.

Assuming Flortescue's would serve him, of course. He doubted they'd let Draco in the door.

As Theo poured the second pot of tea and Draco came in their door with those braced shoulders he met the man's eyes and Draco looked from Theo, tea pot in hand, to Hermione, who'd crossed the room and was looking at the titles of their many books. Tension slid out of him at the sight and Theo pulled down a third cup.

"How was work?" Draco asked.

Hermione shrugged and didn't turn around. "House elf issues. Some fool woman who thought her husband was lured away by a siren. The usual."

"A siren?" Draco took the cup Theo handed him and sat down. "Was he?"

Hermione snorted. "It's never a siren," she said, her eyes still on the books. "It's never a siren. It's never a veela. It's never anything but a girl from the local pub or Quidditch club."

"Are you sure?" Draco asked.

She turned at that. "Unless Tiffany, with her teased hair and a jumper way too tight, has a magical allure totally lost on me, I'm thinking her breasts did the trick without any need for veela ancestry."

"Breasts are squishy," Theo said. He immediately wanted to take the words back because Hermione looked shocked and a little outraged and too late he remembered he'd told himself to never mention that to her even if it had been one of his main thoughts when they'd been pressed into him.

"What?''

"Just… I can see why your Tiffany might have been appealing," Theo said. He cast a desperate look at Draco for help but Draco didn't rise to the bait and left him there. "That's all."

Hermione hurumphed and turned back to look at the books until he handed her the cup of tea, fingers brushing over her palm in what he hoped she'd take as an apology. She scowled a little, but accepted the cup. "Girls are tricky," Theo said.

"Squishy," Hermione muttered.

He ran a hand along the arm that wasn't at all soft. She might be wrapped in layers of curves but he'd not want to be between that wand arm and someone she thought was an enemy. "Mean," he said. He tugged her toward the couch and she let him and then the three of them were seated, Draco and Hermione on the couch and Theo is a chair facing them, all with cups in hands, and Theo had no idea what to say next.

Hermione went back to questions. "How does this work?" she asked.

"Well," Draco began, "you insert part A into slot B and repeat until done."

She hit him. She hit him hard and Theo had to put a hand over his mouth to keep from laughing as Draco rubbed at his arm and glared at her. "You deserved that," Theo said. "Don't look to me for sympathy."

Draco transferred his glare to Theo.

"I meant… how does this _work_ ," Hermione said. She waved the hand not holding tea between herself and Theo, then herself and Draco, and finally between the pair of them. "Just dealing with R… with one person was tricky enough some days. What _is_ this?"

Theo slouched a bit at that. "I don't know," he said. He thought about how long he'd been with Draco. That was the connection that had sustained them both through times that had been more than dark. Hermione had been a crush. She'd been a fantasy. She'd never been _real_ and now in the span of less than a week he'd met her again, invited her home, and kissed her. "I don't know," he said again.

Draco slid over until he was seated closer to her. "Do we have to have an answer?" he asked. "Just… could we let this be easy? Not try to plan or plot it out?"

"Plans do tend to go awry," Hermione said.

Theo contemplated the war, and how much had to be behind that seemingly simple sentence. "Maybe we can figure it out as we go?" he said. "We could go on dates."

"Dates?" Hermione sounded doubtful.

"Like for ice cream," Theo said. "I hold out your chair, Draco fetches napkins, that sort of thing." He hoped he wasn't being too transparent.

Hermione's face suggested the idea of that filled her with trepidation. "Or we could not," he muttered. Maybe not too transparent but not something she wanted to do.

"No," she said, though she sounded nervous. "Dates are good."

Draco managed to slide even closer to her. "So," he asked, "do you kiss on a first date."

She raised her hand as if she were going to smack him again, then lowered it and smiled at him a bit impishly. This she clearly felt more comfortable with than the idea of going on a date with the both of them at once. Theo didn't blame her. They'd be stared at, and she had to be wondering what their intentions were: quick shag, romance, three kids and a manor house.

"You'll have to take me on a date to find out," she said to Draco.

"What's still open?" he asked. His glance at the door was exaggerated enough to make her laugh and the delighted smirk that earned her made Theo's stomach flutter in a way that Draco's happiness always did. It had been so rare, that happiness, for such a long time. He didn't know if he'd ever be able to take it for granted, didn't know if he'd ever stop bracing against the screams in the darkness that sometimes followed even good days.

"Maybe we could just practice," Hermione was suggesting as he refocused his attention on her. "I'd hate the first date thing to be even more uncomfortable than it's already likely to be."

Draco ran a hand over her knee. "That would be unfortunate," he agreed. He lowered his mouth to hers and, setting his tea down, slipped his other hand behind her head and Theo watched as she slid on their couch until she was lying under him, her own tea discarded to the floor where someone was sure to knock it over before the night was done. He moved to join them but stood, not sure how. He decided to just sit on the floor, near their heads.

Hermione and Draco both turned to face him at the same time. He leaned to kiss her but the result was less romantic than he hoped and instead he knocked his forehead into Draco's.

"Shite," Draco said.

Hermione reached a hand over to rub at Theo's forehead. "I'm sorry," she said.

"Don't be sorry." Theo pulled her hand down and kissed her palm.

"It's a bit like being fourteen again and not knowing anything," Hermione said. She sounded rather put out by that.

Theo laughed. "Do I open my mouth?" he asked, mimicking his childhood self. "What if he puts his tongue in there. Gross."

"And if I don't, do I seem like I'm too uptight?" Hermione said in response.

"You were," Draco said.

Theo and Hermione both looked at him.

"What?" he asked. "You know she was uptight at fourteen. You saw her at school."

Theo glanced at Hermione whose smile had become strained again. "You do get used to his tendency to say exactly the wrong thing," he said.

"Do you promise?" she asked.

"I do," Theo said. He scooted closer to her, knocked the tea cup over, and swore. "Shite."


	8. Chapter 8 - The Date

The date was awkward.

Hermione really couldn't shake that thought as they settled around a table at the very nice Muggle restaurant Theo had recommended. She couldn't fault the choice. Dim lights, attentive servers, and a small menu that she was told varied daily depending on what looked good at the market that morning all added up to a place she was sure cost the earth. Her menu didn't have prices displayed and she decided to ignore the sexist oddity of that if only because she didn't want to make this even more uncomfortable. Olympe Maxime's _Etiquette for the Modern Witch_ hadn't covered who paid on a three-way date. Hermione had checked.

Theo looked like his tie might be choking him, and, even in light so dim Hermione couldn't make out the subject of the oil painting behind his head, Draco seemed paler than usual. "This place is good," Theo said after the waiter made noises about bringing them a vintage he thought they would enjoy and slid away with gliding steps. Hermione wondered if waiters here practiced that smooth walk in case the bobbing of a normal stride might upset customers.

"It seems very nice," she said.

"It's pretentious as fuck," Draco said. "But the food really is good."

"And they let us in," Theo said.

Draco's fingers twitched at cuff of his sleeves. They were down, no one could see his Mark. Not that it would matter here. "It's Muggle," Hermione said.

"Which would be why they let us in," Theo said. She could feel her jaw thrust out in a way that would have made Ron nervous but she kept herself from going on about how unfair that was. Neither of them needed to hear how they'd been children. They knew. They knew, she knew, they all knew how young they'd been.

"Trust the pair of you to find the most outrageous Muggle restaurant," she said. "Couldn't just have fish and chips at the pub."

"We do that too," Draco said. "I just thought - ." He stopped talking and she wanted to find a hole and crawl into it. Of course they had wanted to make this special and she'd had to go and complain about how poncy the place was.

"Sorry," she said. "I guess I'm just nervous."

The waiter returned with whatever bottle he'd gone in search of, still gliding in a way that would have pleased any dance teacher. The wine was opened, poured, swirled, sipped, and declared acceptable as she tried to decide what that picture above Draco's head was. When the waiter poured her glass, she clutched at it like a lifeline. Then they were toasting and she took one quick desperate sip, then another, then a third and Theo filled her glass. Draco and Theo both ordered 'whatever's good today' and the waiter nodded, pleased with what was clearly the sophisticated choice, and turned to Hermione.

"That," she said. "I mean, what they said. The good thing. I'll have that."

She drained half the glass of wine as the unflappable waiter informed her with all due seriousness that that was an excellent choice, and asked Theo if he should bring another bottle. Theo said yes, and by the time Hermione had come to the conclusion that whatever she'd ordered really was good she was thoroughly pissed.

She didn't realize quite _how_ pissed until she stood up. Then the room wobbled and she blinked a few times. Muggle restaurants usually didn't move like that. Theo slipped an arm around her waist and she batted him away. "I'm fine," she said. She was, too. She probably shouldn't apparate, and she admitted that, but walking was fine.

Draco paid cash and she watched him slip the crisp pound notes into the leather folder with the bill and some part of her brain noted that he didn't have a credit card but he didn't flinch back from the Muggle world either. The rest of her brain seemed far more concerned with the way his hair gleamed even in the near darkness. When they got outside, the gloaming had arrived and the dark blue sky wrapped around the brightly lit London streets. His hair shone in the lamplight as well, and she reached a finger out and touched the pale strands with delight. "You are just so fair," she said.

"Is that good?" he asked as they set off down the pavement.

She shrugged and Theo laughed as he helped her around a large pot of flowers someone had inconsiderately left right in her way. "Love," he said, "watch your step."

"Have that removed," Draco said, waving his hand at the blooms spilling down the side.

"Can you do that?" Hermione asked. She wouldn't be surprised. The Malfoy reach had been infamous. Some of it still had to remain.

Draco, however, just rolled his eyes at her. "I can't even go into most shops," he said. "You think I could get the Ministry todo something I wanted."

A passing Muggle heard the last part of that and stopped to share his opinion on the government. "Bunch of royal-loving sots, all of them," he said. "You, me, none of us can get anything. When was the last time you tried to get anything out of the NHS?"

Hermione looked at the man and tried to remember what the right response was to this as he went on. Her mum and dad had railed about the National Health Service at length, and she remembered that the subject could make pleasant people start to sputter, but she was distracted by the lurid sign across the street. Red glowing letters promised psychic readings by someone named Donna. The mystical astrologist was open, and walk ins were welcome. She nudged Draco with her fingers and pointed and he looked at it, then back at her. 'Really?' he mouthed but the thought seemed to delight him and he eyed the befuddled Theo, trapped in a conversation about Muggle government, with harmless malice in his eyes. Watching him, Hermione felt a lump in her throat. This was who he should have been. He should have been just a boy with a mean sense of humor instead of what he'd been forced to become.

Theo was masking his obvious confusion at the ongoing rant about the NHS by saying, "Even if you're posh, doesn't matter if you don't know the right people."

"Exactly," the man said, and wobbled off down the street.

"What was that all about?" Theo asked but Draco was already dragging him over to knock on Donna's door. "What is _this_ about?" he asked, but Donna had already opened the gateway to her beaded and incensed shop with a dramatic fling and stood there, draped in shawls Sybil Trelawney would have been embarrassed to wear.

"I knew you were coming," she said.

"Funny," Theo said. "I didn't."

Hermione glared at him and he hissed back, "You don't even like divination. What are we doing?"

"We're here to have our future told, of course," Draco said, and he followed Donna's waved hand into her lair. Theo followed, his arm still around Hermione.

Donna wasn't a woman who felt moderation should be followed in all things, or in any things. She'd covered every flat surface in cheap cotton scarves with tiny mirrors sewn into them, and she must have been partially color blind because she'd gravitated to mostly shades of red and they all clashed with one another. The incense burning in a hideous red dish mostly covered the lingering scent of fish. The three of them sat down on a sagging couch that escaped being red by dint of being a faded salmon, and Donna flung herself down into an arm chair across from them. She'd painted her nails a gleaming blue and she tapped them on her knees.

"You wish tarot," she said. It wasn't a question.

"I suppose we do," Theo said. Hermione avoided the look he was giving her, half-resigned and half-amused. "It's the most accurate, right?"

"The future speaks in fog and horns," Donna said. "But for you, cards. Forty quid."

"Forty?" Draco sounded as though he couldn't quite believe it, but before Donna could do more than look offended, he pulled out his wallet and handed over the requested amount. She tucked the notes down into a lavish bosom, whence she pulled a deck of cards. As she shuffled them, Draco made the mistake of asking how she'd gotten into fortune telling. Was her mother a witch, perchance?

"My grand-mother had the gift," Donna said in sonorous tones even as she shuffled with a brisk efficiency that suggested when she wasn't bilking tourists out of money this way, she used cards to get their money another way. "But witches are sad creatures who live in the ruins of the old ways. The future reveals itself to seers, not witches."

"I quite see," Hermione said. She exchanged a glance with Draco who mouthed 'sad creatures' at her as he tried not to laugh.

Donna held the cards out to them, spread in a fan, and demanded they each pick one. Draco's fingers seemed to hesitate before he touched the faded cardboard but he finally picked one. "The past," Donna said in her weighted voice. "Don't turn it over yet," she said more normally. The sudden lack of theatricality was jarring, but she returned to her psychic voice when Theo picked one out and she announced, "The present."

Hermione was not surprised her card was designated, "The future." The entire thing was so ridiculous she couldn't stop feeling delighted at her impulsive decision to come in until the woman took Draco's card, flipped it over with a flourish she'd surely practiced in front of the mirror.

The card read _La Mort_ in careful hand-drawn letters, and Hermione realized for the first time Donna wasn't using a commercially printed deck but something she, or someone she knew, had drawn by hand. A skull leered up at them and she shivered. Her French wasn't especially good, but even she knew what _mort_ meant.

Draco had drawn the death card.

She looked over at him. His face was schooled into polite surprise but all the humor had leeched out of it. This had stopped being fun the moment he'd seen that card. "You have had a change," Donna said. Her voice still rang with absurd dramatics, but now all three of her clients were listening. She smiled at their shock. "It means change," she said, "death is but a great adventure, and you have had one and it has shifted who you are in some fundamental way. It has paved the way for the present. Obviously, you didn't die in the past."

"Obviously," Draco muttered.

She turned over the next card and they all breathed out relief at the seemingly innocuous four swords. "It is time to be still," Donna said. She sounded motherly at that moment, and Hermione met the woman's eyes, startled, and she looked eerily compassionate. All Hermione could think was that she was good at this. She exuded a combination of the exotic and the nurturing that must serve her well. "Wherever you are, stay there."

Draco made a point of looking around the lurid room and Donna laughed. "In _life_ , child," she said. "You can't sleep on my couch. Make no sudden decisions. Let things lie fallow for a bit. Let yourself wait."

She turned over Hermione's card and smiled at the sight of _'L'Amoureux'_. The French had been neatly written above a picture of three figures all entwined in an embrace that bordered on lewd. Hermione blinked at it several times. Whenever you looked away and looked back the picture seemed to have slightly shifted as though the black ink had twisted in the light to let the people wrap themselves even more intimately around one another.

Hermione suddenly felt very sober.

"And they all lived happily ever after," Donna said. "Or they will." A ding sounded from the back of the building, rather like a stove timer had gone off, and she stood. "And now you must depart." She waved her arms with a wild flourish as the timer dinged again and her smile became a bit more strained.

"We should let the seer go," Theo said. He stood up and walked the few steps to the beads hanging over the doorway. "Draco?"

Draco helped Hermione pull herself out a divot in the couch that threatened to swallow her whole, and thanked Donna for her time. She began what was surely a rehearsed speech about how the future revealed itself and so on, but then she set a hand over his arm. Her fingers rested on the expensive shirt right above his Mark, and she yanked it back at once as if she had been burned. Her eyes got suddenly frightened, and she tried to recover and finish her spiel but she couldn't get them out her door fast enough.

When the purple door had been shut behind them, the neon sign blinked off and the whole place went dark.

"She's off to have her reheated fish and chips, I suppose," Theo said.

Draco swallowed hard. "Right," he said. "What a ridiculous fraud."

"Divination's just as much rubbish with Muggles," Hermione said. She hooked her arm through Draco's. "Let's go home."

It had gotten fully dark while they'd been with Donna, and they stepped along the pavement in silence all the way back.


	9. Chapter 9 - The End

After that encounter, Hermione didn't want to do anything. It was one thing to say that fortune-telling was rot and rubbish. It was quite another to have someone turn up cards that might have been a standard sleight of hand for the happy ending, but had been chillingly accurate with the past.

The death card.

And she'd reacted to Draco's Mark.

"Do you have any more wine?" she asked when the three of them made it back up to the flat She knew she was wobbling. She knew if she drank more she'd have a horrible headache the next day. She just didn't care. Draco must have shared her feelings because he pulled a bottle down without any commentary and began to pour. Hermione drank the first glass too quickly, and held her cup out for more. He obliged.

She sipped this one and looked around. "That was fun," she said at last. "Donna. What a gal."

Theo laughed, but she could tell it was a hollow sound. "Maybe next time we can do the ice cream thing," he said. He had a glass of his own and had already downed half of it.

"Maybe," Hermione said. She twisted her fingers around and around the stem of her glass, sure that what she was about to say was a bad idea. _Lie fallow_ , the woman had said. But when you let a field lie fallow that was so it could break down the things already within it. It was so it could be made richer. "What was it like?" she asked. She knew it was abrupt.

Draco didn't pretend to not know what she meant.

"Horrible, mostly," he said. "Interspersed with flashes of fantasy that I'd be important." He wouldn't meet her eyes as he said that.

"Seems like a normal thing to think," she said.

"That's what I keep telling him," Theo said.

"I hate that most." Draco still wouldn't look up, wouldn't look at either of them. "That I thought anything other than he was a madman, that everything was… I hate who I was."

"We shouldn't have sex," Hermione said. The words had come out of her mouth before she realized she'd said them aloud. It was another full beat before she realized the timing was about as bad as it could have been. "I mean, because of the wine," she added as hastily as she could. She didn't want him to think her announcement was because he'd had totally normal dreams of being important. Voldemort had preyed on people's fantasies the way a demon might, and promised just enough to string them along. They had probably all felt they would be powerful and important.

"Right," Draco said. "Because of the wine."

She took a deep breath and tried again. "We should have sex tomorrow, when we are sober."

He fumbled with his glass but managed not to drop it.

"Do nothing," she said. "That was the suggestion for a present that leads to a happy ever after. I think that includes my not looking for an apartment."

"Might also include not having sex," Theo said.

"I don't see why we have to punish ourselves," Hermione said. "We should have sex and we should talk about how things were. Cleanse the soul and all. End the nightmares."

"I like how you think," Theo said. He might not be quite sure it would be that easy, but it was a path. It was a possibility.

She grinned at him. "You always did think I had a beautiful mind," she said.

"True enough," he said. He raised his glass toward her in a toast. "To doing nothing."

"Except sex," Draco said.

And they all laughed.

. . . . . . . . . .

 ** _A/N - I just wanted to wrap this one up. The plotless ones are hard to find an end to, but this seemed like as good a place as any. I hope you enjoyed the little confection that this ficlet was._**


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